Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,23

array of tiny jam jars.

It was almost more than she ate in a week.

Luke was still standing and she understood that he wouldn’t sit down until she did. So she sat and unfurled a huge napkin. Linen, thank you very much.

This was so different from her usual breakfast, gobbling down a pot of yogurt over the sink.

“I didn’t know what you liked so I ordered a little of everything.” Luke was watching her carefully, as if unsure whether he’d done the right thing or the wrong thing. Hope tried to remember the last time someone cared what she ate.

“Thanks so much,” she said softly, and his face cleared. “But — could someone become suspicious that you’re ordering so much food?” She glanced at the cart. “And two plates and two cups and saucers?”

“Coffee? Tea?” Luke was holding up both pots. She indicated the coffee and he started pouring. “This two bedroom suite is registered in the name of two men, booked by a big fertilizer concern in Idaho. Credit card is in the company name. Two businessmen in a nice hotel, their company saving money by booking a two bedroom suite instead of two separate bedrooms.”

She nodded, pouring hot syrup over pancakes that smelled like heaven. It all smelled like a sweet and savory heaven. The pancakes were perfect, crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside. From what she could tell, the syrup was real. Came from a tree and not a factory. Everything tasted fresh and not factory-made.

“I’ve been holding Felicity off,” he said casually, putting two slices of toast and some sausage on her plate. Hope couldn’t remember the last time someone actually served her food and who wasn’t a waiter. “She’s called three times.”

Hope looked up. Luke didn’t look worried or tense, so it wasn’t an emergency. If it had been, he’d have woken her up. “Do you know what it was about?”

“Yep.” He kept his face expressionless.

“Am I — am I in trouble?”

“Nope.” The sides of his mouth curled up, almost a smile in that oh-so-handsome but oh-so-grim face. “The opposite in fact. Felicity found herself unable to hack your security system. She was pleased but also irritated. Not much is unhackable by Felicity. She’s impressed and —” His cell rang. He glanced at it. “Speaking of the devil.”

He grinned and held the phone out to her.

Hope put Felicity on speaker and video and smiled at her on the screen. Felicity had some color in her face and was sitting up. She sounded upbeat and less tired than the evening before. “Hey! I thought I was good! This is an absolutely new paradigm.”

Hope smiled and sipped her coffee. “Yeah. Basically asymmetric-key encryption that shifts every second.”

“Like you said, you’d need a quantum computer to break it and even then …”

Hope was so pleased. Felicity got it, but then of course she’d get it. “We’ll be okay until the Singularity.”

“And by then it won’t matter. Because Skynet will have taken over.”

Hope smiled. It was their favorite meme. The Singularity was coming and Skynet would follow but for right now, it was OK. “Right.”

“Listen, Hope. I know you said you didn’t want to sell the system to us …”

“God no!” Hope was delighted to give it to ASI. She’d been wondering how to use her system that was so secure it was almost scary. Who to sell it to? Not the US government. There were parts of the US government that definitely needed sunshine, not an unbreakable wall. Not her company. Her ex-company by now. Her hedge fund didn’t deserve it. They were all greedy fucks who’d walk all over their grandmothers’ faces with cleats for an extra 1% margin of profit. Nope. ASI sounded like a good place for her system to land. They’d helped Felicity. After a little research last night before falling asleep, she’d learned that they’d helped a number of other people, including Summer Redding-Delvaux, her hero.

Felicity smiled at her. It was like she was in the room with them and it warmed Hope’s heart. “Listen honey. We work sometimes with Black Inc. They really helped us out recently on something I can’t talk about. But it was serious stuff and they came through. Would you be willing to sell your system to them? It’s exactly what they need.”

“No.”

Felicity blinked. Luke turned his head sharply toward her.

“No?” Felicity said.

Hope shook her head. “I won’t sell it to them but I will give it to them. If they are your friends and helped you